holy Mary, Mother of God...

Notre Dame la Grande, Poitiers, France

Pondering today's feast, Mary's assumption into heaven:

I like thinking of Mary as a Warrior. I propose that all of you consider what your image of this Virgin might be – so that again she might excite our imaginations and provide us with an example of what a woman can do. She has done so in the past. Her weapons are always prayer, fasting, and sacrifice. Time and time again these weapons have overcome the mighty and pulled them down from their thrones. I wonder how it is that the evil of an oppressive Communist empire finally collapsed on itself almost without one shot being fired by men. Could it not possibly be that countless prayers in her name were stronger than bombs and sabers, warheads and tanks? Behind all that fluffy lace and golden pillows, their hides the strength of mother, the strength of prayer, and the promise of victory from a loud voice in heaven that says: “Now have salvation and power come, the reign of our God and the authority of his Anointed One.”

  

This is what we celebrate today: God’s affirmation of a woman, God’s affirmation that there is power in a mother’s love to defeat every evil and right every wrong, to pull down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly. The Assumption is not just God’s exaltation of faithfulness and discipleship, but our own as well.

~Fr. Tom Boyer,

2012 homily at St. Mark's, Norman

St Pierre Church, Caen, France 

By praying both with our voices and our thoughts, we shall experience in ourselves how the Immaculate gradually takes possession of our souls, how we shall belong to her every day more in every aspect of our lives, how our sins shall disappear and our faults weaken, how smoothly and powerfully we shall be drawn always closer to God.

~Maximilian Kolbe

It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation,
always and everywhere to give you thanks,
Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God,
through Christ our Lord.
 For today the Virgin Mother of God
was assumed into heaven
as the beginning and image
of your Church’s coming to perfection
and a sign of sure hope and comfort to your pilgrim people;
right you would not allow her
to see the corruption of the tomb
since from her own body she marvelously brought forth your incarnate Son, the Author of all life.

~Communion Preface, Mass for Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Guido Reni

[A]t first I had no idea where the lovely Magnificat we sang every night was from: ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my savior’ [Luke 1:46]. When I eventually found it in the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel, I was startled but glad to see that it was one pregnant woman’s response to a blessing from another… 

 The song is praise of the God who has blessed two insignificant women in an insignificant region of ancient Judea, and in so doing ‘has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly: [who] has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty’ [Luke 1:52-53]. . They are a poetic rendering of a theme that pervades the entire biblical narrative—when God comes into our midst, it is to upset the status quo.The Magnificat’s message is so subversive that for a period during the 1980s the government of Guatemala banned its public recitation (a sanction that I’m sure the monasteries of that country violated daily)…  

I treasure Mary as a biblical interpreter, one who heard and believed what God told her, and who pondered God’s promise in her heart, even when, as the Gospel of Luke describes it, it pierced her soul like a sword.

~Kathleen Norris [Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith]

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Note: 

Tried to find a video for you, but alas, it was not to be found... 

click here for a special treat: a song by Austin blues singer Margo Valiante titled, "I shall Not Walk Alone"

France, Mary, and me

in a side chapel at Rouen Cathedral, I discovered this treasure

On our recent pilgrimage of the great French Cathedrals we encountered countless pieces of religious art.  But as my insightful mother in law MarySue Schriber noted, 

“good art shows you something new that you haven’t thought of before, as distinct from confirming what you already know.” 

I've been pondering on that, and came up with a few images of Mary from our pilgrimage that helped me discover something about the Mother of Jesus, by opening up my memory--and my imagination.

the "hipped" Mary at Amiens

AND at Compiegne--love her stance!

My first draft of  “The Seekers Guide to Mary” was completely journalistic.  I covered everything:  Mary in relation to scripture, history, other faith traditions, shrines and prayers. 

But my editor at Loyola Press kept pushing me, urging me to say it, “in my own voice.”  It was the hardest thing I had ever faced as a writer—and the best thing I've been pushed to do. 

Mary has always been part of my life as a Hispanic Catholic.  But how do I explain that to you?  The process of rewriting and editing that book made me focus on my own relationship with Mary, and it made me work on how to explain it to other people. 

Caen

Crypt chapel, Chartres

Notre-Dame-la-Grande, Poitier

I had to learn that it was—or rather, it is—through my own stories as a youth, as a mother,  with my own family that I can best tell you about Mary. 

I once heard author Madeline L'Engle say at a writers’ retreat that, yes, it's all been said before. But we have to tell it in our own voice.

At a personal level, that’s how Mary makes sense to me. 

the three kings, Epiphany at St-Pierre de Chauvigny

and the Annunciation (back), with demons and angels watching (front)